Menu
Menu
🍝 A 2018 law restricting public access to private beach land in Walton County is now under challenge with a new bill heading to its final Senate committee.
📉 Vacation rental owner Andra Welde reports significant financial losses since the law passed, citing a 50% drop in bookings last year.
🏛️ Senate President Kathleen Passidomo unexpectedly added SB 1622 to the Rules Committee agenda, giving the bill a path forward despite prior opposition.
It may be an apocryphal story – but it’s the one that sticks in Andra Welde’s head. It’s playing again and again in her mind as a bill that could restore people’s access to walk on private land at the beach makes its final committee stop, despite some political headwinds, before it gets a full vote and a chance at becoming law.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane to 2018—a simpler time for people walking on the beach, to hear Welde tell it.
In the Florida Capitol, First-term Senator Kathleen Passidomo fought for a law that would restrict the public’s use of the beach. During the discussion on the bill, 2018’s SB 631, she allegedly made one of the more unique I’ve heard in my time as a reporter: “There’s another anecdotal story going around that Kathleen Passidomo was famous for making lasagna and bringing it [to the capitol],” Welde recounted, “And when this Bill came up for vote, she said, ‘if you don’t vote yes for this, you’ll never get another plate of lasagna from me.’ So the idea is that we lost our beaches to a plate of pasta.”
We reached out to Senator Passidomo’s office for comment on this story. We’re waiting to hear back.
You see, the beaches of South Walton have roughly 1,200 private beach homes that back up to the Gulf – and a handful of public beach accesses that let people walk out to the waters of the Gulf and walk beside it to their heart’s content.
Story Continues Below:
Has this story made a difference for you? Consider making a monthly supporting donation to Mid Bay News so that we can continue to create meaningful local journalism for our community.
Before the passage of the bill, beachfront owners like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee got a judge to grant them fee simple to the sand in between his home and the Gulf – and by damn – wasn’t no one gonna take his land – especially not his fellow Republicans who sat on the Walton County Commission that passed a law guaranteeing their almost exclusively Republican constituents access to the beach.
To that end, he enlisted Passidomo and other legislature members, including a Democrat from South Florida to file and pass SB 631 – which barred Florida counties from allowing the customary use of private land by beachgoers – a right they’ve enjoyed since at least the 1970s, according to the Florida Courts. The bill passed, with a couple of amendments which exempted other counties that passed ordinances similar to Walton County’s. The exemption only came into effect if the ordinance was passed before 2016. Walton’s was passed in 2016, which meant it would be the only county with an ordinance on the books that would be affected by the new state law.
Since the law has passed, Welde says she and other members of their family who own vacation rentals in South Walton have felt the financial consequences. “Our property values, which have definitely seen a decline, because the beach access has really deterred people from wanting to come out there,” Welde said, “Last year, our bookings were down 50% so far. The staff this year, we’re down 65%. The [Walton] County [Tourism Development Department] is saying numbers overall are down 11%. I would love to have 11% decline this year. We’re looking at, you know, a very open calendar, and that’s a direct result of Senate Bill 631 that restricted beach access.”
Now in her final term before the state constitution bars her from running again – Passidomo sits at the top of the dog pile of the Rules committee.
It sounds like a pretty dull job, and it might be, but it’s also the final hurdle that Senate Bill 1622 must pass through to get to the Senate floor for and up or down vote. In theory, Passidomo could have left the Bill, written by State Senator (and likely future Senate President) Jay Trumbull, off the agenda and effectively killed it.
But, she decided to include it for Monday’s meeting.
Most people, including a well-placed source in another state senator’s office, thought Passidomo would deny the Bill a chance at the light of day. After all, it is Passidomo’s prerogative to let the Bill on the final session agenda of the Rules Committee before the end of the session. Instead, despite voting against the Bill twice in other committees, her office released an agenda Wednesday evening that showed the Bill on the agenda. “We couldn’t believe it when we saw that,” a source who isn’t authorized to speak publicly said, “But I guess she’s gonna let it happen.”
As of 10:02 PM on Wednesday, April 16, the Bill still has a place on the agenda for the Easter Monday meeting that will take place from 2:00-6:00 PM Eastern Time in the Pat Thomas Committee Room – 412 Knott Building.
The bill passed through the Judiciary Committee with a 7-2 vote (Don Gaetz was the other with no vote) and an 8-1 vote in the Community Affairs Committee earlier in the Florida Senate’s nine-week session.
For what it’s worth – to the senators who are reading this and will have to vote on Tuesday in the Rules Committee – Welde says her lasagna is pretty good too – and she’d love to bake you some in exchange for your vote.
